This report is focused around Lost and Found data using the intakes and outcomes data received for 2019-2021. Its goal is to reflect everything we could learn about L&F from the available data, make sure the numbers we see make sense, and highlight things that would be useful to show but some/all data required for them are missing.
Date range: 2019-01-01 to 2021-09-30
Scroll down or use the table of contents on the left to navigate throughout the document. Most sections contain multiple tabs showing different facets of a data type. Most plots are interactive, meaning they include tooltips and allow hiding and showing parts and zooming in and out. If something went wrong, look for the house icon in the top right corner of each figure to reset.
This section provides an overview of the RTH rate per year divided by species.
This table covers all strays and RTHs. Animals younger than 4 weeks are excluded from stray and RTH calculations. RTH rates shown below are the number of strays with RTO outcome out of all strays.
When we go over this, let’s make sure we calculate the rate the same way you do, so we would want to make sure what we see makes sense. If these numbers are right, they are higher than the national and HASS averages, which are at 30% RTH rate (for dogs), and show a moderate improvement since 2019.
| Species | Year | Strays | RTH_Count | RTH_Rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cat | 2019 | 1554 | 63 | 0.04 |
| Cat | 2020 | 1307 | 59 | 0.05 |
| Cat | 2021 | 1371 | 45 | 0.03 |
| Dog | 2019 | 1498 | 414 | 0.28 |
| Dog | 2020 | 1198 | 361 | 0.30 |
| Dog | 2021 | 915 | 313 | 0.34 |
| Other | 2019 | 219 | 2 | 0.01 |
| Other | 2020 | 236 | 5 | 0.02 |
| Other | 2021 | 232 | 6 | 0.03 |
This one only counts animals who came in as strays from the field. Normally, we would then split these by RTH method between RTO in the field and in the shelter, but since there only 5 animals with subtype of return in the field, we will just look at the RTH rate as a whole.
The rates for dogs higher than the overall ones (except for 2020), suggesting the RTH of over-the-counter dogs would be lower (next tab). For cats, it is the other way around.
| Species | Year | Strays | RTH_Count | RTH_Rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cat | 2019 | 197 | 4 | 0.02 |
| Cat | 2020 | 205 | 5 | 0.02 |
| Cat | 2021 | 249 | 9 | 0.04 |
| Dog | 2019 | 567 | 181 | 0.32 |
| Dog | 2020 | 613 | 175 | 0.29 |
| Dog | 2021 | 419 | 154 | 0.37 |
| Other | 2019 | 117 | 2 | 0.02 |
| Other | 2020 | 144 | 2 | 0.01 |
| Other | 2021 | 64 | 6 | 0.09 |
This shows the numbers only for strays that were public drop offs. Indeed, the rates are slightly lower than field intakes for dogs (37% vs. 32% in 2021), and slightly higher for cats.
| Species | Year | Strays | RTH_Count | RTH_Rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cat | 2019 | 1443 | 60 | 0.04 |
| Cat | 2020 | 1210 | 58 | 0.05 |
| Cat | 2021 | 1147 | 40 | 0.03 |
| Dog | 2019 | 1138 | 287 | 0.25 |
| Dog | 2020 | 692 | 213 | 0.31 |
| Dog | 2021 | 533 | 171 | 0.32 |
| Other | 2020 | 99 | 3 | 0.03 |
These three time series show the RTH rate per month, to show whether there were times with particularly high or low rates as well as the overall trajectory. These figures show only dogs information because there were only 8 RTH cats in 2021.
It seems like the rate has been slowly increasing since January 2019, which is great! For cats, it has been fairly steady with peaks in January through March.
This is the same figure, but only counting field strays (again, anything marked as ACO pick up). The improvement trend is similar to the overall figure, although mid-2020 seemed to have more lower months before picking up again around the turn of the year. The project checklist indicated that ACOs were expected to reunite animals in the field and were given some of the necessary tools for it only around January 2021 (+/- 2 months) – it is possible that this contributed to this increase.
This figure only counts strays who were public drop offs. Here the improvement seems to halt around March 2020 and since then there are some ups and downs, which matches the fact that the yearly rate for these was lower than that of the improving field intakes.
This section shows the number of stray intakes over time, as well as the breakdown of strays by field/shelter intake.
Dog numbers are pretty steady, suggesting that the differences in RTH rates between months are not a result of differences in intake volume.
Looks like more animals come in from public drop offs (the first and third categories, which seem to be the same but with a little typo). Other than the first three, other values are infrequent.
The average difference in length of stay (in days) between strays with RTH outcomes and all other strays is shown in the table below – roughly 15 days for dogs and 17 for cats when looking at the average.
That means that every successful RTH saves 15 days of care on average at Oakland Animal Services, and field RTH would save an extra day or two on average for RTH from the shelter.
This could translate to pretty significant cost savings at scale – assuming a daily cost of care of 30$, if 100 more dogs were returned home in 2021, it would have saved Oakland Animal Services about $48,000 in costs of care. This is a fairly simple calculation, but it gets at the magnitude of the potential benefits.
| Species | Outcome | Count | Average_Length_Of_Stay |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cat | Other Outcomes | 4016 | 29.94 |
| Cat | RTO | 167 | 12.08 |
| Dog | Other Outcomes | 2504 | 19.69 |
| Dog | RTO | 1088 | 4.30 |
The following maps show stray intake and RTH rate by Census tracts to highlight geographical patterns. The first and second tab are similar to previous metrics; the third tab, RTH Gap, shows the number of strays who were not returned home per census tract.
The data in this section includes stray dogs for which found addresses were present. We performed this analysis only using 2021 data and can extend it if relevant.
There were 2710 animals with intake type of strays after removing animals DOA and Born in Care. About 300 animals had unusable found locations - primarily “finders house/backyard”, “oakland”, “unknown”, “given to person”, and the shelter (night box or OAS). About 300 additional addresses that included landmarks rather than precise locations (e.g. an abbreviation of a park or lake) and street names only were excluded.
After this filtering, the data below (number of strays, rate of RTH, RTH gap) is shown for 2170 strays of which 338 were RTH.
The area around the airport stands out most clearly.
Note that the area with the highest stray intake also has among the lowest RTH rate.
This combines the other two tabs to highlight where most additional RTH potential exists - it shows the number of strays NOT returned to home in each area. As the RTH rate is fairly low in the areas with the highest stray intakes, it looks pretty similar to the first map.
Here’s a sneak peak into the top 10 found locations plotted above, to make sure they make sense to you.
| Found.Location | Count |
|---|---|
| doolittle and grumman st 94621 Oakland California | 16 |
| 1239 5th ave 94606 Oakland California | 10 |
| 2520 church st 94544 Oakland California | 10 |
| 1441 103rd ave 94603 Oakland California | 9 |
| 2645 prentiss pl 94601 Oakland California | 9 |
| breed and durant 94605 Oakland California | 9 |
| 1239 78th ave 94601 Oakland California | 8 |
| 29th ave and international blvd 94601 Oakland California | 8 |
| 806 union street 94607 Oakland California | 8 |
| 9321 international boulevard 94603 Oakland California | 8 |
These are the top 10 locations in the Census tract 409000 with the highest stray intake in 2021.
| Found.Location | Count |
|---|---|
| Doolittle/Grumman st | 17 |
| Worth st/ Edes ave | 7 |
| 420 Hegenberger Rd | 6 |
| 9835 Empire Road | 6 |
| 1 Sally Ride Way | 5 |
| 2 on Hegenberger / 2 on E.18th | 4 |
| 8400 Edes Ave | 4 |
| 9000 block of Edes avenue. | 4 |
| 9650 Coral Rd | 4 |
| Hegenberger / Collins | 4 |
This map shows different demographic information for Alameda County.
One example of using both the census data and shelter data is below – there is a negative correlation between stray intakes and median household income, such that there are fewer dogs coming in from areas with higher income.
Another notable pattern is that some of the high-intake areas are also ones with higher concentration of people who speak Spanish but not English (shown in the figure in % in the horizontal axis).
Found location - Out of all strays in 2021, only 39 had a found location of the shelter address, which is a reasonable percentage, 32 had the ‘24/7 box’ value, and 157 had to be removed because they did not list an intersection or a street number (but just a street name, for example).
Intake subtype had several values that were in very infrequent use as you could see in the figure above.
Outcome subtype – it looks like Field Return was put to use as an outcome subtype, which is great, but it hasn’t been used much since.
Other things we could show if we had the data for it:
Thanks for reading through, and we’re looking forward to talking through it and thinking about more ways to make this data useful for you.